Picking up substrates from upstream machines and/or facilities and laying down the substrates on the downstream machines or facilities is a standard object to be achieved in production engineering. In this regard it is very important to place the substrates onto the downstream machines in a precisely positioned and accurately aligned manner. To this end, the substrates have to be aligned. Alignment of a square substrate can be achieved in that one of the side surfaces of the substrate adjoins a substrate pick-up in a flush manner. This means that the substrate pick-up must contact at least one edge of the substrate. In case of non-square or polygonal substrates, the contact between the substrate pick-up and one side of the substrate does not lead to an exact alignment. It must be inspected which side of the substrate is in contact with the substrate pick-up. If a quality control of the substrates, i.e. an edge inspection, should additionally be carried out, the substrate must be laid down in a further process step so that all edges are freely accessible for an inspection.
For the procedure being as effective as possible, such additional process steps are undesired. It is a further disadvantage of the prior art that the sensitive edges are contacted by the substrate pick-up. Thus, the edges of the fragile substrate can easily be damaged.
In view of the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and a device for aligning substrates, wherein the substrates are not held or contacted by the substrate pick-up on the side but are nevertheless laid down in a precisely positioned and accurately aligned manner. It should be possible to control the quality already during transport, so that no additional process steps are necessary. These and further objects are achieved by the features of the claims.